Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for providing a graphical representation of a business process and more particularly to providing a user-relevant view of a human-involved business process.
A business process can be defined as a sequence or sequences of activities that achieve a final state. That is, a business process, defined in any of a variety of known business process definition languages, can define tasks to be performed at various points in time, upon the occurrence of some event or condition, upon request, or based on another criteria. For example, in a human resources management context, a business process may define tasks to be performed when “on-boarding” a new employee or upon the termination of an existing employee. In another context, business processes can be defined for ordering supplies, generating work orders, filling work orders, or any other process to be performed in the conduct of the business. These processes can involve both completely automated processes as well as processes that involve and/or require human interaction.
In some cases, these business processes or, more specifically, the definition of the business processes, can be viewed in a graphical form. For example, frameworks exist for reading a definition of a business process and rendering a representation of that process in a graphical form via a web-based interface. However, current web-based UI frameworks do not provide visibility to business processes in a manner that is contextually relevant to the user. For example, these frameworks do not provide a graphical view of all the tasks components within a business process, do not allow the user to maintain context when viewing a business process, and do not display activities of multiple human task “owners”. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and systems for providing a user-relevant view of a business process.